The 6th World Congress of People who Stutter, Ghent, Belgium, 23-26 July 2001

It was a warm Monday morning when a bunch of about 10 BSA members and staff met at Waterloo station in London to board the Eurostar train to Brussels. For some of us, this was the first travel to a stammering event, never mind abroad. Others were old hands in these matters - have stammer, will travel!

British forces: BSA members and staff combined work and play at the ISA Congress. For Vijay and Judith Patel, front, it was their first chance for a honeymoon.

After a brief journey to Brussels and a hurried change of trains to Ghent, we arrived at Ghent station where the author made himself very unpopular by underestimating the distance between the station and the chosen hotel ("it looks as if it'll only be five minutes, not worth the tram ride").

After lugging our luggage for about 25 minutes through the heat-shimmering streets of Ghent on a hot Belgian July afternoon, we finally made it to our hotel and were in desperate need of a welcome shower. My reputation for reading maps has never recovered.

The official part of the World Congress was formally opened by Conference President Jan van Borstel of Ghent University who brought the best wishes of Congress Patron HRH Princess Mathilde who is a speech and language therapist by profession. Gert Reunes, the conference organiser and chair of the Belgian Stammerers Association then gave a rousing speech, culminating in a joint rendering of Sister Sledge's "We are family"!

Finally, film director Erik Lamens introduced and showed his award-winning short movie about stuttering. It left me with mixed emotions - it was very moving and many of the emotions expressed were familiar to most of the audience. I thought the message given out ("I've got time") was very close to the simplistic advice of "just take your time" variety we are all familiar with. Having said that, I enjoyed the production and Erik's personal insights touched a nerve.

After the "official" part, the organisers had laid on a "walking dinner" which gave us the opportunity to mingle and meet the delegates from more than 40 different countries, as far apart as New Zealand, Iceland, Peru and South Africa. The UK contingent - it has to be said - was probably the largest there, with the exception of the host country.

There were a range of fascinating presentations and a number of workshops, including BSA's very own Andrew Harding doing a workshop on the employment project.

Two of the most interesting speakers were Professor Shengli Li of the Chinese Rehabilitation Research Centre in Beijing, and Professor Jin, who leads a medical centre in Shanghai.

With an estimated 14 million people who stammer in China, the treatment of and research into stammering is a relatively new field in the medical profession. Speech therapists have a very low status and it has only recently become possible to access information from research in the Western world. Professor Li showed excerpts of a television programme on stammering where both he and Stefan Hoffman of the International Stuttering Association were interviewed, with hundreds of callers responding on telephone helplines set up in the studio (it was gratifying to see that advertising on Chinese TV is just as daft as it is here).

Professor Jin from Shanghai presented her research into the knowledge of and attitudes to stammering in China. While she found many superstitions and much misinformation (which is not all that different from the situation in the West) there were also some surprising finds, e.g. that the knowledge about early stammering is much better than in a comparative study carried out in Denmark. As Chinese society places a higher value on boys than on girls, it is much more likely for a stammering boy to be referred to speech therapy (which is really only available in the large cities) than girls.

The most challenging lecture was certainly that of Prof Luc de Nil of the University of Toronto in Canada who gave the Congress an insight into the most up-to-date brain research and the differences in measurable brain activities between those who do and who do not stammer. Listening to Luc in the auditorium, I marvelled at his skill in making complex scientific concepts make perfect sense, but I am sitting here, today, some time after the event and all I can recall was that it DID make sense but can remember, alas, no further details. Perhaps it would be an idea for future Congresses to have the talks available in written form to take home. The programme was certainly filled with items of interest that at times I found it hard to take it all in.

This was my first World Congress and I did not know what to expect. Certainly, having it in Europe, it felt very much like an ELSA event with a number of overseas visitors attending. I wonder what guests from, e.g., the States made of it. It must perhaps be equivalent to Europeans attending an NSA event where everyone knows each other - the European connection was very much in evidence with the "old hands" renewing old acquaintances.

However, there were also new friendships made. I was delighted to meet, for the first time, Annie Bradberry from the National Stuttering Association in California; Annie is the executive director of the NSA and I hope that we will have many opportunities to exchange views and ideas. Michael Sugarman - the brain behind the International Stuttering Awareness Day - was another new friend I found in Ghent, and there were many others. But there was ample time, ample opportunity, and ample beer accompanied by good food to mix and mingle with stammerers from all over the world. I had never met anyone from Peru before - and he spoke German better than English!

This World Congress was a fantastic achievement. While there are always things we can learn for future events, I think people who have not been involved in conference organisation have very little insight into the difficulties one encounters along the way. The Belgian Stammering Association VZW BeST have done themselves proud - the International Stuttering Association took a risk by awarding the Congress to one of the smallest and youngest stammering associations in Europe and their trust has been repaid many times over. Gert Reunes, Martine de Vloed, Dirk Vannetelbosch - and many, many others (you know who you are) - thank you so much for all your hard work!

At the Congress I seem to have developed a knack for upsetting Australians, though, and I will need to work on that before I attend the next World Congress - Perth 2004! No, not the real Perth (see what I mean?) - the other one in Western Australia. Under the title "Fluency and Beyond - A Holistic View of Stuttering", the Australian Speak Easy Association and the International Stuttering Association invite you to attend - probably in February 2004 - the Seventh World Congress for People who Stutter. February in Western Australia is the end of summer, with an average daily temperature of 32 degrees during the day, 17 degress at night. What better way to escape the dreariest time of the year in the UK?

So start saving now - while the cost of travelling to Perth may be relatively high (currently approx. £600), we are assured that the registration fee and the cost of accommodation will be lower than in Ghent, due to the strength of pound sterling against the Australian dollar - expect to pay about £100 for the registration fee, and between £12 and £30 per night for accommodation.

Future announcements will, of course, follow, but if you've ever wanted to go down to Oz - plan your trip around the Seventh World Congress for People Who Stutter! If Ghent was anything to go by, it will be well worth it. In addition, one wonders whether it might be an idea for the British Stammering Association to start developing a bid for 2007? If anyone is interested in lumbering up for this mammoth task, please contact the office for a chat!

From the Autumn 2001 edition of Speaking Out

See also:
Photos of the World Congress in Ghent on the website of the Belgian Stammering Association.
The 7th World Congress for People Who Stutter 2004 - Perth 2004.